Especially with the widespread use of cloud based storage and mobile computing and storage devices, enterprises and other organizations are subject to loss and leakage of their sensitive information, as a result of both inadvertent and malicious user activity. Data Loss Prevention (“DLP”) systems can monitor, detect and block operations on sensitive information when it is accessed, copied, transmitted and stored. By doing so, DLP systems can protect sensitive information according to defined organizational policies. As one example, within a given company certain members of the Human Resources department may be authorized to access personal employee information such as home addresses and social security numbers. However, copying such personal employee information to non-company cloud storage or USB devices could be a violation of company policy. DLP systems can classify specific information as sensitive, identify and monitor such information, and detect, block, generate alerts or take other desired actions in response to specific attempted operations and incidents.
When a DLP agent is in use, there can be significant delay in the out-bound file transfer operation, such as copying files, sending emails with attachments, or uploading files to web servers. DLP based monitoring and analysis of these operations can cause delay that is significant enough to irritate users and interfere with productivity. DLP can routinely triple the time required for a file transfer, and depending upon the size and type of the content involved, increases in latency of five or even ten times are possible.
It would be desirable to address this issues.